On the state of modern journalism

I spotted this on my Facebook timeline earlier this evening: Scientists Have Built the First Modular Body—a Living Being That Isn't Alive

Sounds scary right? Just one slight problem with this story: it isn't real. If the author had bothered to click on the link in the (allegedly 'recently unearthed' but posted 6 years ago) video's description he would have noticed the following summary: 'Modular Body is an online science fiction story about the creation of OSCAR, a living organism built from human cells.'

Indeed, I saw this and some related material at an art gallery (I think it was in Austria in 2016, but am not 100% sure). What this also shows is the state of modern journalism, especially in technical/scientific fields. Time was mags would hire people with a background in a subject (one of my tutors at uni moonlighted as a science correspondent for the Guardian). Now they hire arts graduates who don't have a clue about the scientific content and spend most of their time summarising press releases. This combined with the desire to get clicks leads to fails like this piece.

Seems like Popsci need to fire some sub-editors (if they still have any) 

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